What Your Hotel Can Learn From Starbucks

It’s all about personalized service, and any hotel is striving to deliver the best service possible. I work at a 5 star property in Manhattan and all hotels in our comp set are beautiful, have luxurious rooms and facilities, and state of the art technology. So why should travelers spend their money at your hotel and not at the competition next door? Well, your answer is probably because your hotel provides better service, right?

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I am Sam

Nowadays it’s not so much about the product anymore, and all about the service… personalized service to be more specific. Welcoming your guests by their name is the simplest and most effective way to provide this personalized service… but only in theory! What if I told you that every luxury hotel I ever worked at either struggled or the very minimum had room for improvement with using the guest name consistently? Do you think this is acceptable?

If your answer is that it’s unacceptable, you’re wrong, because most hotels seem to accept it if you  look at their inspection scores. Mobil and AAA understand the importance of using the guest name and how it makes our guests feel welcome… and with that no matter how good your product and services may be, you will not get 5 stars or 5 diamonds, if your employees are not using the guest name consistently, and two times during each interaction.

So how is it that Starbucks gets it right and that their employees will use your name every single time without exceptions. Starbucks will provide personalized service at very turn… and you know what? It makes you feel good about yourself. It makes you feel recognized and appreciated – and exactly that is the idea of personalized service.

So it’s time for us to wake up, admit to ourselves that we’re not perfect, have some catching up to do and that we can learn from others. We need to move fast and stay agile, because if not the competition will pass us by.

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